The Cathartic HoneyMars of The Cyclops and The Phoenix
by Quillon42
Summary: Another look at the Morrisotan Scott and Jean here, and what might have happened to them had they repaired their relationship before the early-Oughts fate of the Phoenix.


(I stand corrected (by myself) from my first X-Men story: there has been an occasion in which Scott has been seen drinking—although it was during the very corrupt Morrison run and right before Jean died—which of course was 100000% Scott's fault. (Sarcasm). I'm not saying it wasn't his fault at all; yes, he could be blamed for some of it. I just don't see it as a hundred trillion percent his fault that Jean died; other people and other factors could be blamed as well. In any case, as with my Quesadilla story, I'm trying here, in my appreciation for S and J, to bring them back together, and heal the wreckage wrought by the Machine in the early 2000s. Don't worry, the jerky Quiddle does not appear in this story; this has the sober tone of the Warren story I just did (with a little bit of humor thrown in, but not overly obnoxiously much). The whole 2016-2020 "precognition" by Jean is just a prediction I'm making here…nothing canon, of course. I hope you all enjoy the story).

(One more thing real fast: Jean's "suck an ass" line here might sound out of place, given the way she normally talks…but what of the Bendis-bastardized Sixties Jean who tells the love of her life to "leave her the hell alone"?! Riddle this author that for a spell!)

THE COUNTERREVOLUTIONARILY CATHARTIC HONEYMARS OF A/AN/THE CYCLOPS AS WELL AS A/AN/THE PHOENIX by Quillon42

SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDST OF 2003

In another era of narrative, the once-great original gangsta of heroes and leaders—the one known as Scott Summers—would never, ever be caught dead in a Hellfire establishment, other than to raid the place and rid it of its inherent evils.

However, as he was under the influence of the malevolent Morrisotan atmosphere, Slim was at the moment of a mind to steal the motorcycle of "The Man" among mutants (when in long-ago solo adventures, such as one against Batroc, Scott would conversely leave a note for a bicycle owner after borrowing the conveyance out of necessity) and to scam it on over not only to a Hellfire haunt per se, but even to its gentlemen's establishment so that he could drown sorrows and errors he committed.

Back at the mansion, his wife and soulmate Jean was cleaning up the mess he had made. It was pretty damn fun, she had to admit, to kick around the dastardly diamond dame who claimed her husband's emotions and attention generally for the past several, several issues. Bringing Emma back from her state of discombobulation, after her offspring Esme had brought her into such with but a bullet, was equally satisfying, as Jean had maintained the high ground and the upper hand throughout.

Of course, though, the woman's mission of marital mercy was still not complete. There was now her man to go after, and the loving bond they shared to recover. And in this reality, the Grey One would not allow the wayward wranglers known as the writers to wreck what she and Scott had.

Telekinetically the lovely lady lifted herself across town, to the place where Scott was scattering his brain cells and his dignity irretrievably. Within the same booth, the invariably, indisputably impervious one (both in terms of combat aptitude and incontrovertible rectitude) known as The Wolverine was worming his way—righteously, and not-to-be-questionedly, of course—into the mind of the other man, to get under his skin and metaphorically kick him while he was down. Because a great hero who was bound to become the new flagship character of the Machine should employ such underhanded tactics to achieve his own undoubtedly unselfish ends.

Meanwhile, the froggy fucker known as Fantomex sought also to take advantage of Scott, specifically to use the beleaguered leader as nothing more than a laser cannon weapon in the course of assailing an organization whose facility was in outer space.

At any rate, while the man who was ret-connectedly to be soon known as "James Logan" at this juncture was in the course of breaking down the Slim self-sacrificer of The Twelve, of a sudden:

"Get away from him, Logan."

"J…Jeannie?"

"I'm not going to stand by and take this anymore. I've had it with the latent passive-victim moods that have been foisted upon me by forces beyond my control who don't understand my history and motivations. (At least, passive except for the petulant catfight I had to have with Miss Frost…)."

The perennial protagonist of the X-Men just stared at the woman he wanted for so long in abject shock. "But…Red…!"

"No. You and the Fantom Frog can go play with your Plusses and all by yourselves. You don't need my husband for it. You don't need to use him. And you're supposed to be the flagship character."

She waved The Wolverine away with a telekinetic flourish. "And I'm supposed to kiss your friggin' shoulder ever so subserviently on the silver screen—a "work" starring you, of course, front and center in our supposed-to-be ensemble franchise—about ten years from now. Get the fuck out of here."

(NB: Jean didn't mean that as in, "Get out of the room," but rather "What the hell"—Q42)

"Yeah, but anyway, Logan—I'm still on my Frost-confrontation kick, somewhat—please leave. Right now I'm asking you nicely. Take your Weapon Plus playmate in Fantomex (which is the action-figuriest codename I've ever heard—I mean, really, Grant?)—and go."

Shaking his head, bewildered, the Logan could do naught but comply with the woman whom he worshipped ever so faithfully and frighteningly. The fantastically-named "Fantomex" took his cue as well, and whisked away ever so whimsically, like the nondescript pseudoninja that he was.

"Scott," Jean said now, placing a hand gently on the man's shoulder.

She then shunted them abruptly through the Hellfire ceiling and into outer space. "Screw the dictates of Grant County. You and I are settling this, once and for all."

The ascent into the ether was like nothing Scott had known for so long in his interminable, mostly heroic and of-late-semiantiheroic life. Whether it was when he tripped up into space to join his love in stopping Steven Lang so long ago, or even before then when the original Xers fought a certain Star Spawn with the travestyingly-editorially-underresearched-yet-uber emotional support of a world full of uprising subalterns—or of course in so many other jaunts with Jean into the wide void yonder—it never felt like this. Really, this was such an exodus through and beyond the exosphere, as well as the

X-Sphere of their school, as they never did before, a gateway to a getaway that the both of them really should have brainstormed about in place of St. Bart's, to where they originally traipsed right after they took their vows.

Perhaps the Askani wouldn't have found them up here, either, to do all that handholding and herohoisting of the kid who would become Cable.

But that was alright, as the Askani experience brought Scott and Jean ever closer together, those freaking dozen years during which they inhabited the far future. And this kind of closeness was exactly what Jean was going for again, in bringing her man all the way up here.

So where exactly were the two Machine-corrupt-script-staggered spouses at present?

Somewhere where the ravishing redhead had hoped that even the screwy scribes who wrote her ever-ongoing story would not reach her and her husband.

Somewhere where Jean knew she could most effectively begin to push her amaranth agenda, with its volatile environs and its maroony milieu: the Great Red Spot of Jupiter.

"Well, Scott," the woman began, amidst so much mist and wind that kicked up all over the place, "as I said just three minutes ago—on Earth—we're going to have it out. You and me. No distractions. No milky mistresses, or clawing casanovas, or bald professorial bastards who seem to know and do what's best for us. We're not having any of those…people get in the way."

A few meters from her, Scott was looking around, bewildered, almost frightened as swirls of unknown gases curled all around, frothed between them. Jean hadn't seen him look so vulnerable since at least the Twelve arc, back when he was much nobler, and much more…alive, as far as she was concerned. She couldn't get any kind of a spark, of reaction at all from him over the last several months. So she decided to take them both out of their element—literally—for the time being.

The man whirled his head around, shaken, as his wife addressed him next. "So why are you doing this to me, Scott? What's with the walls? What's with the distant, cold indifference?" Scott found that he had to duck a few tossed-around crags here and there as he struggled to maintain Jean's gaze. At first the lady thought to let him straggle in the adverse atmosphere—but then she found she couldn't help but guide some of the more threatening debris out of her love's way.

"I can't…" Scott began, doing all he could to stay on his feet in all this ethereal weather as the winds whipped all around, "I just…can't feel the way I used to, Jean. It's just not the same…unh…anymore!"

"_The man trying to stand in front of me is not the man I married!"_ she shouted, over all the mess milling around them. _"Where the hell has he gone?"_

Cyclops struggled to remain standing as he found himself fighting not only the elements of this foreign planet, but also telekinetic blasts from his longtime lady love.

And indeed, she had every right to be furious with him. "You hide behind Apocalypse…but he's not the one who you're truly frightened of.

"Maybe it's the Phoenix that scares you. Maybe it's me, imbued with the Phoenix, and the prospect of..'going Dark,' with it.

"And maybe—and yes, I confess I've had to read your mind just now, to understand you…maybe it's that prospect of never knowing life beyond Xavier…and beyond _me._

"Given that both the alien Phoenix and Madelyne were Jean Xeroxes—another thing beginning with 'X,' how apropos, given the narrowness of your life—you haven't known much other than the REDS you've always viewed through your glasses. Except for maybe Lee Forrester, and, of course…that White Witch who wants to take you from me. But I won't let her, Scott."

Cyclops finally took to blasting some of the airless-atmosphere-borne rocks all around him. "Jean…this is my life…my own decisions! You can't…"

"I know what you're going to say, Scott, so save it. You want to follow your own passions. I get that real crystal.

"Yet you told Emma, all the way over in Hong Kong, that it was me or nothing." Jean slowed a shard of Jupiterian rock just as it was sliding through the tense atmosphere straight towards Scott's heart. She then tossed it effortlessly out of the way. "And, it's like, you want something else, but counterintuitively, you want me more than anything. And that's what confuses me. So what is it?"

"J…Jean…"

"It's been, what, about SIX MONTHS since we've just been, like…bed buddies. You don't even touch me anymore, Scott. You can't begin to imagine how much I want to feel it. How I've wanted to hold you…to have you…"

"Damn it…"

Jean couldn't tell if her man's cuss was out of frustration from almost being struck across the face by another airborne crag, or from being confronted in such a way, or both. Though she was very vindictive with her words, the last thing she wanted was for him to be hurt physically. The whole TK thing a minute ago was just for menace and nothing more.

When Scott then belted out with a blast that shattered a boulder aiming straight for his face, Jean found that she had to duck a second. Cyclops's eyeshot blared out over the place where his spouse's head was a second ago. The man then realized that he'd nearly struck her with it.

"_JEEEAN!"_

The man then crumpled fully to the ground. From a crouched position his wife eyed him, piercingly, lovingly. Forcefully she cast aside all other debris coming their way, then maxed out her basically cosmic-level TK so that there was nothing around the two of them for what was the equivalent of a two-city-block radius save for what was basically a flattened telekinesis-formed canyon floor.

"Scott…"

The two gazed upon one another now, from their varied configurations of cowering, Scott craning his neck up woozily after nearly taking a few small mountains to the countenance, Jean sweeping her attention towards her husband once more after brushing off some planetary dust—from her perennial Morrisotan duster coat, of course—and looking at him with a mixture of disdain, urgency, and longing. This all couldn't go on; it had to be brought to a head.

Jean braved the desolate distance between herself and her husband. When she reached his hunched-over form, she shed the long, lousy coat with which she was beset in the goofy yet gothic locale of Grant County.

She placed a hand on the man's shoulder warmly, just as she would, not too far in her days to come, in a more mainstream reality, for a man whose language was seemingly more magnetic than Mandarin after the latter's trouncing defeat. As in that reality, here the man she came over to comfort turned and responded unexpectedly. Unlike in that reality, however, he answered not by bestowing upon Jean an electromagnetic stroke of the mind, but rather an emotional stroke of her hand.

He opened his mouth to speak, but she raised her other hand to stop him. "Scott, you have to understand. I've been…receiving signs lately. Signals from the not-too-distant future. I recall Betsy saying that she had these at least once or twice, way back, like, in the early nineties…then they went away for her.

"I remember her calling them…precognitive flashes. Only hers went just like seconds into the future. Mine go days…weeks…years.

"Scott, I can see everything that's going to happen for me, and for you, the next dozen years or so. It isn't pretty at all, for either of us." She leaned in closer, to speak directly into the wearied man's ear. "And I said 'for me, and for you,' separately like that, for good reason."

The man to whom the Marvelous Girl was speaking was shaking all over, now, unable to hold it all in anymore. The amalgamation with Apocalypse had made him more stoic, more stolid than he had ever known—and it wasn't a good pose for anyone, least of all for him and Jean as a couple.

Gathering all the strength he had on this Jupiterian canyon floor, he mustered a glance at the woman he would always adore.

"What happens?"

She took a deep breath. "First off…I die again."

She then proceeded to go through the entire litany that so many witnesses in a dimension beyond the fourth wall already know, all too well. From the fateful, fatal encounter with Xeudo-Xorn; to a seemingly-face-turned-Frost; to a definitively face-lifted Cyclops, without shades, during a most Astonishing time; all the way to the trek across the States; to the Schismatic shocks that split the Xers asunder; to the Phoenetic fright that Scott eventually becomes, in the year of the Mayan calendar's expiration. Scott couldn't close his mouth through most of this as Jean even showed him some of the scenes from the future, playing out before his eyes, all by way of her ever-increasing cosmic power.

_Thank God he doesn't have salivary blasts,_ Jean thought to herself as she espied drops of drool emanating from the man's maw. It was all that captivating for the Clops—or for anyone—to take in.

He could do nothing but shake his head, slowly, for several moments. "Well, then…where are you? Where do you go, after you die…if anywhere?"

Jean only closed her eyes and looked down a moment. Then: "It's…really difficult to explain. I'm still all in the Phoenix Kool-Aid and what not—and don't even get me started on the concept of 'Kool-Aid,' as per so many other people's bizarre, absurd, frightening worship of me over the next decade or so—but anyways…I'm like, relegated to this…pocket dimension. Just to do work.

"Phoenix Work. I can't explain it any further, from what I've seen. It's stupid, I know.

"One really horrible thing, too, is what happens to you costumewise. The year after the supposed Mesoamerican end of the world, you'll take on a new cowl. Your face will look like a friggin' 'Strike' symbol from Family Feud."

She took a moment, then allowed herself to let go a second. Laughing a bit breezily, she lowered herself to his crouched position, then: "Name a woman who Scott Summers should be with. BEEP BEEP BEEP! 'Emma Frost!'

"SURVEY SAYS?! ANNNNNNGGG!" And with this last sound effect, she softly placed her forearms in an X configuration against his face.

Even Scott could allow himself the faintest trace of a smile at this. Jean rejoiced inwardly at her finally being able to start to get through to him. She continued on.

"All I can say is…with all of the deification for me, and the downward spiraling for you…

"It's going to suck an ass, Scott. On a cosmic, omega level. But you and me, we can still stop it. And, in all seriousness, truth be told, I haven't even told you the worst of it yet—and hopefully, once and for all, if anything can lapse the 'lypse out of you—the evil influence of Apocalypse, that is—it's going to be this.

"I won't be finished paying my Phoenix White Hot Residency until about…2016 or so, from what I can foresee. But when I come back…

"Forces beyond our control are going to keep us apart. I can't really define what these forces are…but these powers…these insidious, hegemonic, editorial powers…they're going to push me away from you, and directly into the arms of…"

"No."

"Yes. Him.

"These forces…they're kind of an entity like Mojo, you know? Big ugly fools who want to use us to put on the biggest, most obnoxious show ever. And all that matters are the ratings.

"Well, unfortunately for us two, we don't 'sell' as well, us as an item, this side of the millennium. So, in 2017, 2018, 2019…the operative mutant romantic mashup is not Scott and Jean, but…yes, Logan and Jean.

"Wolverine and Jean. UGH…'The' Wolverine and Jean, really.

"And you know what the _worst_ of it is? …Oh, you'll get me back. In 2020…a very 'vision'ary year, probably the year you should be in all your glory, with your optic abilities and such.

"But it won't be the same. You see, what you created, with you and Madelyne regarding Christopher…and you and the original alien Phoenix Me, with Rachel…I'll have my turn at maternity.

"But the boy won't be a Summers this time."

The cowed Cyclops at her feet cringed at this, and Jean could almost feel the passing of an evil influence from him, not unlike when Cable separated Summers from Sabah Nur with a Psimitar around the time of this tale generally.

"Scott…I'm not going to lie to you. You know, I broke 'em for you, about you and Emma in Hong Kong…well, one time, I found that Logan was meditating, out in the woods, and…well…"

A couple more minutes of honest explanation passed, punctuated with a groan by the great, original leader of the mutants. "You and Logan…?"

"Baby, all we did was kiss. Once. What I just said about maternity and all is like at the end of the Twenty-Teens, relax. At least, it_ might_ happen. If we don't fix things now, anyway.

"Logan told me it would never work out. And you know what?

"I agree."

Jean endstopped this last statement by hunkering down fully on her man, she knowing fully that in his weakened, desperate state, he wanted nothing more than this and he wanted it just as much as she did.

As she proceeded to kiss and caress her first and best love, Jean thought more in the back of her mind about the Forces Beyond Control, the ones manning the Machine, and how it must have been them who always ever-so-contrivedly forced her and "The" Wolverine into so many tight situations for two. The prison cell during Hodge's Genosha reign. The pocket dimension that the little jerk Warp shunted them into. Even the forest meditation encounter she just confessed now.

_Well,_ she decided, _I'm the one who's writing my life now…and this time, I'm forcing the 'tight _

_situation for two' that I've always wanted…with the man I've always wanted it with._

"Wait, Scott," she then said, seconds later, as the man before her whom she recalled from before the millennium, the one who used to hold her like that, the one who cared for and loved her as she remembered so well, as he reached for her passionately, lovingly.

She looked down at him. "I want to make this perfect. As I said before…this is going to be our real getaway. Not only our second honeymoon…our _real_ honeymoon. And if you can believe it, I'm going to take us to a place that's even redder than here, on Jupiter."

And with that, Jean rose, scooped Scott up into her arms with the heroine's very own preternatural Phoenixness, and escorted him ethereally to the neighboring planet, the one between the Great Red Spot and Earth.

"Really, I suppose we're going on a honey_mars,_ then," mused Mr. Summers, most unfunnily as usual, as his lady lowered them down onto what was really the equivalent of a mesa on Earth. It was the most beautiful plateau to which she could have taken him, and she knew this for certain as she reviewed some of the man's memories while they touched on down.

"I know about a number of particular…vista views that you've been to with various women, Scott," she began, as she leveled some uneven ground to make a sort of picnic space for herself and her man. "About the expanse of space that you watched with Maddy. About, of course, that time on the butte between yourself and the other, alien Phoenix, and what happened with the visor."

She then telekinetically whisked the glasses off her husband's head and, with a wave of her hand, crushed them. Scott instinctively squeezed his eyes shut as hard as he could. "Jean…what…?!"

"Too, I know about what happens in your more…'badass' days (I hate that term), in which you're somewhat hypnotized, by a certain vanilla vixen, into not needing your glasses anymore. With her, though, of course, it's only a temporary happenstance for you."

"I'm taking away the curse, Scott. You don't have to…not control it anymore.

"Please…" And with this Jean guided the man's tightly-closed-eyed head her way. "Trust me.

"Open your eyes."

A pause.

Then another, as Scott lift his head, uncertainly, like a child first stepping into the shallow end of a swimming pool.

Then he lifted his eyelids and beheld Jean standing there, as he hadn't beheld her for so long, she appearing in colors fuller than he had ever remembered, and she now in a condition of compromised clothing that she had not assumed in about five or six months. When she waved her hand again, he found himself in the same clothing-compromised condition.

"I know that Emma playacted the Phoenix in her Dark, red attire, Scott," she said, moving closer to him. The rise and fall of her magnificent roseate bodily proportions overwhelmed him, brought him literally to his knees. "I know you're really into that costume…it's a tough act to follow, I suppose.

"So I figured, well, if I maybe can't top it…why not go with the sexiest kind of clothes…those of the…birthday kind…"

By now she reached him, and before he could do anything more, Jean completely jumped his denuded bones.

As she clutched at him, all over: "And I know you're partial to that certain portion of the Moon, Scott…where an…iteration of me seemingly died. But why have only a 'Blue Area'…

"When you can have an entire Red Planet instead?"

The two then commenced to cavort, canoodle, and carry on with other, naughtier words beginning with "C." Throughout, the coldness cooped up within the 'Clops all but tapered off, seeped out of him, and the one who lay now with Jean was once more the noble, venerable leader of yestermillennium who really embodied the Soul of the Dream.

And next to him, the red-haired Heart of the Dream, the Eve of Mutantdom had back again her Adam, wholly and soundly. As they lay with one another, cuddled cozily in a Phoenix-prepared desire-hued dust blanket on the surface of Mars, Jean curled up ever closer to Scott, smothered his cheek with her lips, cooed into his ear Class 100 tons of sweet nothings, which he readily returned a trillionfold.

In truth, the two of them were back, Cyclops and Phoenix, or, as they called themselves now, A/An/The Cyclops and A/An/The Phoenix, in an endeavor to one-up the coy nomenclatural monkey shines of the irrepressibly irritating uberhero now known (once more) as The Wolverine.

In the course of their sweet nothings, they promised to do it all with one another, sexually, activitywise, even retconnily. Verily the two of them would leave the Uncanny X-Men for a spell to become the Retconny (A/An/The) Cyclops and (A/An/The) Phoenix, in which the devoted duo would use the Phoenix Force to, for one objective, break the fourth wall, make it so they first appeared in Golden Age issues (meaning, the actual issues, that came out in our world) before the X-Men were even initiated, so that they would have an even cooler origin point than the coolblow Canuck, who was too…incredibly je nais se quoi to first-appear in an X-issue. They would then rewrite and reproduce the first X-Men film, from 2000, so that their love came front and center, as it was at the start, with no meddling latter-day interlopers to steal their spotlight. They would then even prospectively-continue, or "proscon," all the way to 2013 (NB: Remember, this story started in 2003), and make the film coming out at the end of July 2013 to be _A/An/The Cyclops and A/An/The Phoenix_, and the hell with the world if these "con"ned films didn't sell.

At the moment, though, the two were still snuggled in the embrace of Mars. "Scott," the Marvelous Lady said, "Let's you and me make a baby, finally. One that, with enhanced "phertility" from my cosmic powers, will be better than Nathan Christopher, or that douchey 'Nate' from the Nineties, or Rachel, or—perish the thought!—friggin' _Hope._"

"Hope who?" (Again, this was only 2003).

"Good answer! Good answer! DING!" she cried FamilyFeudaically once more.

A dramatic, romantic pause. Then:

"Scott…no matter what the gender…let's name the baby Faith. To mark something which is really stronger than Hope…and which binds us together, once again, as one."

The man in her arms spread a smile wider than she'd seen in ages, and as they came together once more, he hummed "One" by U2, which Lila Cheney unfortunately inflicted upon their wedding reception and which this author cannot stand for the ballad's godawful triteness and brain-numbing played-outed-ness. But it was more than fitting for this moment, so the song's humming stood for now.

And it continued to reign for another smattering of Martian moments as Scott and Jean reconciled their love; this author felt vindicated in light of the oncoming cinematic calumny to overtake the general populace in the next seven days or so; and that film's most rabid fans, postmillennially programmed to perennially despise the union of A/An/The Cyclops and A/An/The Phoenix for eternity, made a mental note to themselves to sue this author for the last ten minutes of their lives spent reading this story.

(And this author understands that there was, conversely, the premillennial programming of Scott and Jean themselves as a couple, down the throats of readers in the twentieth century…but at least that programming was pleasant and benevolent, and in this author's estimation not nearly as alienatingly vicious, as the one that would follow).


End file.
